In 1607, 104 Englishmen and boys established Jamestown. It would become the first permanent English settlement in the territory that is now the United States.

Colonialism

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Grudgingly, Captain Newport (Christopher Plummer) frees John Smith (Colin Farrell) on his arrival in Virginia. Smith was condemned to death during the voyage for being annoying. Oh, all right: formally, for concealing a mutiny. He's still annoying. Soon he's wandering moodily around the forests and fields, shirt open to show off his pecs, wearing feathers and beads like he's on some kind of gap year, and banging on about what noble savages the local Powhatan people are. "They are gentle, loving, faithful; lacking in all guile and trickery," he burbles. "They have no jealousy; no sense of possession." Fortunately, director Terrence Malick clearly realises this is patronising tosh. He juxtaposes Smith's airy-fairy voiceover with striking visuals of brutality, and with the Powhatan people's firm resolution (which Smith does not understand) to drive the Europeans into the sea. It's subtly done, but the film accurately sets Smith up as a fantasist.

Violence

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Smith's most famous story, recounted in his 1624 book The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, is of being saved from execution by Pocahontas. Smith was captured by the Powhatan, and said they were "ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines," when "Pocahontas the King's dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death." Some historians think what Smith interpreted as an execution was actually a ritual of welcome. Others point out that there are no known Algonquin rituals of welcome which involve pretending to beat out someone's brains with a club. Everyone agrees that Smith's account is unreliable. The scene in The New World shows ritualistic behaviour of some sort going on, but it's all cut together as confusingly as possible. You're left unsure of what really happened. This is, in fact, the most historically accurate way they could have done it.

Romance

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As Disney's Pocahontas and the song Fever tell us, "Captain Smith and Pocahontas had a very mad affair." Except they didn't, because she was 10 years old at the time. The New World ages her up to 14 (though actor Q'Orianka Kilcher looks like a fully-grown adult) and gives in to the myth. A historian could get cross, because it just isn't true. On the other hand, The New World is considerably more intelligent than the Disney's Pocahontas. She doesn't even have a cuddly raccoon sidekick or a talking tree. Malick uses the "mad affair" as an allegory for the takeover of America by the Europeans. While her fellow Powhatan people resist the Europeans fiercely, young Pocahontas is seduced because she does not realise the more experienced Smith is a scrub. And still really annoying.

More romance

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Pocahontas marries another settler, John Rolfe (Christian Bale). Their relationship and journey to England is beautifully done, but it's also where The New World does verge on Disneyfication. Contemporary evidence hints that Mrs Rolfe may not have been quite so easily accepted and serenely happy as she seems in this movie. A letter from an acquaintance of the Rolfes says she was being dragged around by her husband "sore against her will". When she met John Smith at an inn in Brentford, she angrily upbraided him, saying "your Countriemen will lie much". Rolfe's own priority appears to have been to use his wife's image to sell tobacco, a branding opportunity he seized upon after her death from a lung illness at the age of just 20 or 22.

Verdict

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Historians and film critics argue over whether or not The New World ends up perpetrating the idea of the noble savage itself. It does a bit. Even so, it's a far more thoughtful take on the legend than most fictionalisations, and gorgeous to watch.

• This article was amended on Friday 10 February. The original stated that Jamestown was the first European settlement in the territory that is now the United States. In fact that was St Augustine in Florida. This has been corrected.